by Hannah Tinti
“I want you to invite me over,” he said.
She spun the dial on her bike chain. “I’m too tired to talk.”
Marshall scanned the parking lot, as if he expected someone to come charging out from behind one of the cars. “I’m sorry I got you into trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” said Loo.
“You’re not?”
“My dad is actually kind of happy about it.”
“God,” Marshall said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Oh,” said Loo. “No. He’s not happy about that. He’s not happy about you at all.”
Marshall brushed cornbread crumbs off his tie. “I’ll add him to the list.”
“What did Pauly and Jeremy say?”
“They wanted to make sure I knew they were assholes.”
Loo pulled her bike free of the rack. For a moment she thought of the old yellow bicycle that Hawley had bought her, that had been stolen outside of Dogtown. This one was black and more rugged, with tires thick enough for mountain trails. She’d bought it with her own money. She knew that she should climb on and ride away but she didn’t.
“I saw Whale Heroes. Your mom must be happy.”
“They cut the scene she was in.”
“But it got everyone’s attention.”
“My stepfather took all the credit for her work. But she’s trying to make the most of the publicity before the show moves back to Antarctica.”
“So you still need the petition.”
“I need you,” said Marshall.
The August sun was beating down, the heat reflecting off the roofs of the cars. It was like staring through the bubbled edge of a camera lens, a circle of emptiness coming into focus. Nothing—and then something. Marshall’s pants were covered in stains, his tie askew, his hair as shaggy as ever. He smelled like maple sugar candy.
“My dad’s out fishing,” Loo said.
Marshall took hold of the handlebars. “That’s all I needed to know.”
They rode together. Loo sat on the bicycle seat and Marshall stood, pumping the pedals, the frame bobbling whenever they slowed. She wrapped her arms around his waist. Kept the tips of her toes on the axle. She hoped no one would see them. She hoped that everyone would.
As soon as they got inside her house he started kissing her. His hands clutched at her shoulders, her hair, the sides of her face.
“I smell like food,” she said.
“So do I.”
It was different, being indoors. There were sheets, and she felt less self-conscious twisting underneath them in her darkened room. More willing to try. She pushed off her sneakers. She undid his belt. There was sweat and dirt on Marshall’s neck, and he tore at her clothing like he was searching for something she had stolen from him. He felt the same. He felt like a stranger. She pulled his shirt up and the collar got stuck on his chin and for a moment he was headless and flopping like a fish in a net and she had his arms caught tight and then the shirt fell loose in her hands and there was nothing left to take from him—there was only skin and there was so much of it.
When they were finished, every pillow and blanket was on the floor. The fitted sheet had pulled up from the corners, exposing the hidden buttons of her mattress and the plastic tag’s wrinkled warning. All that was left was their slick and salted bodies and a thread of a blanket that Loo pulled from their ankles and drew across her chest. Marshall had gone so still that she was certain he was asleep. At least she hoped he was, because she was afraid that if she opened her mouth now the truth might spill out: that she missed him, even though he was right there in the room.
When his voice came, it was muffled by the pillow. “Your planets are gone.”
“I had to scrub for days.”
Marshall sat up and looked around Loo’s room, his eyes resting on each piece of furniture and item on her bureau. A bowl of shells, a strip of Skee-Ball tickets from the county fair, a pile of comic books, novels and astronomy guides, some half-melted candles from a power outage, a wad of balled-up tissues from her last cold, a small batch of cormorant feathers that she’d found and kept, because she liked their iridescent black color. Loo watched him puzzle over each object. It was as if he was measuring her life.
“My mom thinks you’re crazy. You and your dad.”
Loo clutched the blanket. She wished she could stuff the words back inside his mouth. Together they had been flying along the edge of something, but Marshall was making the world ordinary again. And so she kissed him, and for a moment they connected. He touched her shoulder. He ran his fingers over her back. All the places where he’d touched her with his pen. A part of her thrilled to this. A part of her wanted to pull away.
He took hold of her hands and pressed them over her head. He kissed her neck. Then he stopped and rested his forehead against hers and they waited like that, breathing into each other. He was there, with her, in the room. And then he wasn’t. He slid his palms away. He crawled back to the edge of the bed and started pushing through the blankets, looking for his clothes.
“I can’t lie anymore.”
“About me or the petition?”
Marshall grabbed his boxers and slipped his legs through. Then he picked up his pants. Coins fell out of the pockets and scattered across the floor, rolling into the corners.
“Both,” he said.
“Then tell your mom the truth.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Marshall. “Things got weird at the police station. She already made me promise not to see you anymore.”
“My dad was just being protective.”
“It wasn’t your dad. It was you,” said Marshall. “You shoved her into a vending machine.”
“She lifted my shirt.”
“It doesn’t matter what happened. You can’t hit my mom. She’s my mom.”
Loo stared up at the ceiling. There was a crack in the plaster, directly over the bed. When she tilted her head to the right it looked like a monster and when she tilted her head to the left it looked like an alien. The more Marshall talked, the more alone she felt, and the more she tried to avoid looking at the spot, the more it drew her attention. She edged her chin back and forth. Alien. Monster. Monster. Alien. The image refused to hold form one way or the other. Her memories of her own mother were the same way. Sometimes she didn’t know if they were real or Hawley’s, a fabrication made from old photographs and snippets of stories or facts she’d read in Mabel Ridge’s scrapbook.
“I need you to promise,” said Marshall. “Not to hurt her again.”
It would be so easy to say yes. But Loo was already curling around the soft places inside her that had been exposed. She thought of the whale dissected on TV by Marshall’s stepfather, the giant liver and intestines, lungs and heart strewn across the beach. He had opened the creature and spilled all that was inside her into the world.
Marshall made Loo feel the same way. Ripped open. At times, she could barely stand it. The boy wanted to kiss her, even though she had broken his bones. Even though she had smashed Mary Titus’s head open until it bled across her bathroom floor.
“You should be glad you even have a mother.”
Marshall sat back down on the bed. “You know my dad drowned, too,” he said. “A dead parent doesn’t make you special. It just makes you sad.”
She wanted to agree but no part of her did. Loo pulled the sheet from under him. “They eat the eyes first,” she said. “Fish. And eels. But your dad was in the ocean, so it could have been a shark that got him. It would have been fast, if it was a shark.”
The boy looked so startled that Loo did not tell him the rest of what was on her mind, all the facts she’d been collecting, all the bits and pieces she had learned from Mabel Ridge’s newspaper clippings—that it had taken them a week to find her mother, that the police had to drag the lake with a net. She did not say, Think of that. Think of your mother at the bottom of a lake. She did not tell him how deep the lake was: more than half a mile. She did not tell
him about the list she had made, of the different kinds of fish that swam in that particular lake, so that she would know what kind of fish had eaten her mother.
“I’m sorry I said anything.” Marshall reached for his watch. He’d taken it off earlier, when the winding pin got caught in her hair. Now he pulled the strap tightly around his wrist.
Loo stayed beneath the covers. She wondered how to put her clothes on without revealing herself to him, even though, only a half hour earlier, Marshall had explored every inch of her with his tongue.
“I think…” said Marshall, and then he stopped. He stood and yanked his pants on quickly, with his back turned to the bed. His belt came next. And then he was searching around on the floor, picking up the coins that had fallen out of his pockets.
Across his back was a heavy, dark bruise, just starting to yellow at the edges, where Hawley had thrown him into the wall at the police station. And now, as he slipped the quarters and nickels back into his front pocket, Loo noticed marks across Marshall’s forearm, the size and shape of her father’s hand.
“I wish you’d never stolen my shoes,” she said.
“I had a crush on you.”
The back of her throat tasted like salt water. “That wasn’t a crush.”
“It hurt, didn’t it?” Marshall lifted his crooked finger. “I know, because you gave me this.”
Loo’s face flushed, remembering the way his bone gave way beneath the skin. The pleasure she’d felt while it was breaking. She wanted to be a good person but she wasn’t sure she would ever be good. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine.” Marshall put on his shirt. He walked to the door. “For the record, I didn’t come here to break up with you.”
She turned away. She stared up at the monster hidden in the ceiling.
“Loo.”
He said her name like it was something he’d already left behind. She could feel her heart twisting inside the walls of her chest.
“Wait,” she said. “Just wait a minute.”
She pulled the sheet around her like a towel. She went into the living room and opened the trunk. She took out the Beretta with the slide lock, one of the handguns they’d used to practice in the woods. She dropped the magazine and filled it. She made sure the safety was on.
“Take this.”
“I don’t need a gun.”
“Just in case. It will keep those guys from screwing with you,” she said. Then she stepped away so he couldn’t give anything back. And when he continued to hesitate, staring down at the machine in his hands, she added, “Never try, never win.”
—
AFTER HE’D LEFT, Loo drew water, poured salts and took a bath, trying to wash Marshall off her skin. She ducked her head under the surface and ran her fingers through her hair. On the ledge around the lip of the tub were bottles of her mother’s shampoo and conditioner, the labels so curled and blurry that it was impossible to determine the brand.
When she was younger and they were on the road, living in temporary apartments, the first thing Hawley would do was unpack the shampoo and conditioner and put them on the edge of the bathtub. Then he’d wipe the bottles down with a towel and pack them again when they were ready to leave. The sticky gel inside was a pinkish color, and smelled of berries. Loo would stare at the bottles from underneath the water, to see how long she could hold her breath. She’d gotten better over the years. Now she could stay under for nearly two minutes before her lungs began to burn.
Loo heard Hawley coming up the front steps. She lifted her head, batting drops off her eyelashes. He set down something heavy on the porch. Then she heard him come inside and open the trunk and start putting away his guns. He’d taken the Colt and the long-range rifle, but it wasn’t until Loo heard the familiar chink of the Remington and the Winchester, too, that she wondered why he needed so many guns to go fishing.
“Loo?”
“I’m in the tub,” she called.
Her father stepped to the bathroom door. Loo thought of the night she’d locked herself inside with Mary Titus. The blood on the tiles. The bite mark on her palm.
“You all right in there?”
Loo squeezed her mother’s shampoo. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t fall down the drain.”
She heard him cross the floor and close the lid of the trunk. Then he went outside and she heard the sound of the new padlock unlocking and a rumble as the garage door opened and closed.
It had taken Hawley and Loo hours to make space for the Firebird in the garage. Now the car was nestled inside, between the lawnmower and a cord of stacked firewood. The time Hawley used to spend in the bathroom shut up with her mother’s things had shifted to the Pontiac, which he tinkered on for hours, even though it was never going to see the light of day again. As he dug around beneath the hood, Loo would stay inside the house, feeling jealous. For months the car had been hers alone, and she hadn’t realized how much she had needed it—a way to be close to Lily that did not involve Hawley and his endless grief.
The rest of the cars from the impound lot—the coupe, the BMW, the SUV and the hatchback—had been driven to Ipswich and abandoned on a dirt road near the bird sanctuary. It had been a long night, commuting back and forth. By the time they were finished, dawn was breaking and the robins and cardinals were chattering in the trees. Hawley had made a phone call, and an hour later, when they drove past again after eating breakfast, the stolen cars had vanished.
“Somebody owed me a favor,” was all her father said.
Since then there had been a shift in Hawley’s mood. He wasn’t happy, exactly—but he was content, as if the job had settled something. Once they emptied the garage and slid the Firebird inside, he’d carried the sniper rifle he’d used to the kitchen table, and showed her how to remove the serial number, just as he’d shown her which cables to pull and hit to spark a motor to life.
—
ON THE OTHER side of the bathroom door the phone was ringing. Loo waited to see if Hawley would answer. She wondered if it might be Marshall—and then she knew it must be Marshall—and she grabbed a towel off the rack and scrambled out of the bathroom and hurried, dripping, across the living room floor. She snatched the receiver and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said.
“Your mother’s car was stolen again. I thought you should know.”
Mabel Ridge’s tone was so cavalier, so unconcerned with all the trouble she’d caused, that Loo wasn’t sure how to respond. Ever since the arrest two weeks ago, she’d wanted to curse the old woman out. But now the words wouldn’t come.
“You gave me those keys,” she managed at last. “You told me I could take the car.”
“Not forever. Not to keep.”
Loo went to the front door and opened it, but there were no police cars, or any signs of anything unusual. Only Hawley’s plastic cooler set on the welcome mat. She dragged it inside and lifted the lid. On a bed of ice were two large fish, their eyes wild, their speckled brown-and- yellow coats gleaming.
“Well,” Mabel said with a sigh. “In any case, Lily’s car is gone now. The police say it’s probably gone for good. Chopped up into pieces and sold for parts. If you had come back to visit me, none of this would have happened.”
“I didn’t want to see you,” said Loo.
Mabel cleared her throat. “I suppose you think I’m a bitter old woman. I suppose you think I’m hateful. But I’ve got reasons for the things I do.”
“Like getting me arrested?”
“Like telling the truth,” said Mabel Ridge.
The fish inside the cooler had wide-open gills. Single stripes cut through their speckled skin, and beneath each pair of fleshy lips, a single barbel dangled like a lure. Atlantic codfish. Loo recognized them from the pamphlets that were now scattered all over Dogtown. She shut the lid and sat down on top of the cooler.
“Did you read the scrapbook I gave you?” her grandmother asked.
“There weren’
t any pictures. You could have given me one, at least.”
Mabel Ridge sighed a great big bellowing sigh. “Your mother was a good swimmer. She could swim through open ocean, from the Point all the way through the harbor. That’s nearly five miles.”
“You said that before.”
“The day it happened, at the lake—the newspapers all wrote that it was perfect weather. No waves on the water. Like a mirror, one of them said. And the lake was only half a mile wide. Your mother never would have drowned in a lake.”
It could have been Loo’s own voice talking. Not now but twenty, thirty years in the future. She felt the towel brush up against the back of her knees. There was a puddle on the living room floor. She didn’t know if it was from her or the cooler of fish but she was standing in the middle of it.
“He killed her,” said Mabel Ridge. “Your father. I know it. And now you know it, too.”
Loo slammed the receiver back into the cradle. The phone slid away and let out an echo of a ring, as if someone had tried to call and then hung up before connecting. Loo’s hair was trailing rivulets of water, running like open faucets down her back. Her hand reached for the phone and drew it toward her. She picked up the receiver and slowly brought it to her ear again, listening to the steady hum of the open line, wanting and not wanting to know what came next.
When she glanced up, Hawley was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He was so still he looked like a ghost.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“No one,” said Loo.
Hawley’s hands were covered in grease. She pictured the hood of the Pontiac propped open, her father feeling around all that cold metal, touching her mother’s car the same careful way he took his guns apart and cleaned them. He watched Loo now with the same kind of carefulness as she set the phone back down in the cradle.
“I’ve got some fish for dinner. Just need to gut them.”
“I saw,” Loo said. “They look good.”
Hawley walked toward her. It seemed like he was going to say something else. But instead he picked up the cooler, smearing grease across the plastic handle. “Twenty minutes,” he said. Then he walked out the door.